Iāve never heard someone say the N word in person until today I think. One minority (aboriginal) telling me how something about blacks but using the N word instead of blacks/African-american.
There are a lot of other smaller instances Iāve seen in my personal life too.
Iāve never seen Indian versus Pakistan racism, but I would at least get why that might happen, since history.
In public policy, the majority (caucasians) are prob the most racist here, but in casual conversation I might hear more minority vs minority racism. I think this partially might be because caucasians have it drilled into them (my city) that they have to not be racist in convo?
Iāve never understood why some minority groups didnāt come out to support black lives matter (here), but it seems to look like bc they donāt care to help out blm bc its not explicitly minority-name-here lives matter
ā¹ļø
Because most white people are far more comfortable position than minorities. Itās easy to be tolerant when society isnāt shitting on you. People being shit on will shit on each other hoping to scramble up rather than unite and take on master shitters. I hope I used the word shit enough.
something somethingā¦chauvinism and alienation
You are not automatically a good person just because of your skin color, assholes exist in every form
A few people thought I meant this. sorry about this dumb question, but what gave you the impression that I meant that?
a lot of intersectional theory talks about this, in short its because they are mirroring the oppression that they have learned from society and reflecting it back often in worse ways.
Its how you get your uncle toms, your partiarchal wives ect
Thanks for explaining, literally helps rest my soul
Any suggestions on how to tell them not to say the n word? Itās so egregious i donāt know where to begin. Like no way do they think itās actually an appropriate word to use.
I was once speaking to a ESL chinese lady and she used a racist term instead of jewish, but it was clear imo she didnt know that the term was racist.
hand them off some claudia jones to read if they can be bothered, otherwise there is only so much you can do to change someones mind in regards to this other than making them interact with black people irl in a civil manner to dispell any bullshit they might have built up.
Its hard to say but I would say a place of empathy is probably the best approach; just gotta realize labeling theory in psychology suggests there is a 80/20 split in people when they get given a ālabelā, this applies to sociological concepts like racism too; the 20 will reject the system of racism people push onto them and apply it to other people in there community without theory to understand the mechanisms of racism are universal control levers by the upper class.
To add to the other posts, it is complicated. Not every minorityās interests line up with another.
This becomes abundantly clear when looking at the āpostā-colonial global south. There are those privileged minorities, the national bourgeosie, the petit bourgeois, the urban proletariat that live far different lives than the āmajorityā (well, in the past, if I remember correctly, more than 50% of people now live in urban areas in 2010) or even other minorities that live in rural areas.
This makes, for example, the agricultural labourers of my country, consisting mainly of south Indian immigrants, to have different class interests than lets say the Malay-muslim and Orang Asli rural communities, or the Chinese minority. Even though they are all āexploitedā by capitalism, and face injustices and face some forms of further neglect compared to others.
To echo concerns some others already had within this thread, there is too much focus on the āminority vs majorityā and of racial hierarchies. And why I say that is because when talking about hierarchies it becomes tempting to rank certain races one on top of another, but that does not really tell you why. Why do certain races hold certain status over others? Because of material conditions. Because of history and geography. It is tempting to say, ābecause of colonialistsā divide and conquer strategyā but it does not explain why it is still here and how to overcome it. And it simplifies history too. Tribal rivalries, ethnic chauvinism existed before capitalism and colonialism. How each ethnic group is situated in the larger relations of production needs to be factored.
Also, sometimes it really is just 2 people fighting for scraps, completely oblivious of something larger (as others mentioned).
Think about how you thought about the world before encountering Marxism or similar. Did you view yourself as part of some race or class? Did you think you are part of class society and your duty is to dissolve capitalism? Probably not.
And thatās another issue we must contend. How to educate the masses in such a way for them to be conscious about their own position in class society as well as their own humanity.
how to overcome it.
What do you have in mind about that? Iāve read a bit about it, the general consensus seems to be and get people focus on class struggle instead of racial struggle.
Straight up, racial struggle is more obvious(ex you can tell what skin color someone has from far away). And most people are focused on the more obvious stuff, like trying not to be homeless under capitalism.
I just saw your comment now, sorry about that.
Honestly I am not too sure either. I need to read more, but I do feel like education is a large part of it. And what I mean by that is education through all channels: school and a revolutionary party curriculum.
I personally would not really put it in terms of āclassā or āraceā struggle because I think it tries to delineate an issue that isnāt clearly seperated into neat little pieces. Race and class are intertwined, which I tried to convey in the first comment. It is pretty much useless to seperate them.
But like you said, we can easily focus on the āobviousā stuff and pivot towards the real issues. Racial solidarity I think occurs when the two parties realise that they have more in common (ie. victims of capitalism) than focusing on liberal identity politics.
I just saw your comment now, sorry about that.
no worries, we got irl lives to live!
I think occurs when the two parties realise that they have more in common (ie. victims of capitalism) than focusing on liberal identity politics.
This might be an angle we could play
Iād say whiteness but Commiewolf makes a good point that this might be too narrow a lens Iām viewing this through.
From my understanding speaking to bame/bipoc individuals and listening etc, whiteness is the idea that one facet of racism exists based on this societal perception of whiteness.
Preface: I am no expert but this is what I currently understand.
Like racism goes down a power hierarchy. You canāt be racist to a white Anglo saxon because regardless of what you say, they exist and have always existed at the top of a hierarchy of races/ethnicities.
You can call us angloids whitey or snow roach or cracker etc but it canāt be racist because itās just an insult based on skin colour. Itās not a fundamental perception and dehumanisation of someoneās ethnicity or race based on racial supremacy.
When someone calls a white person a cracker there isnāt this racial perception that white people are biologically and sociological inferior. Itās said as a provocative insult to rile them up.
However when a white person uses a racial slur against a black person for example it comes with years/centuries of racial chauvinism and a perception that they are somehow inferior due to their race/ethnicity etc.
So with that in mind whiteness is the idea that certain races hold positions on this power hierarchy.
The way Iād articulate in the UK is that Polish people are seen by white Anglo saxons as lazy Eastern Europe semi whites. Thatās an abhorrent racist stereotype but that is the sort of vile rhetoric in the UK. However Polish people themselves can be quite racist to say African immigrants because they are black and see them in the same way as anglo saxons see them.
Thatās the whiteness at play. This idea that certain races/ethnicities have some sort of better standing on the bs race scale that the white hegemony (of Anglo saxon people) has decided.
You see the same with how western countries view Asian countries.
Japan = wholesome good Asian people conforming to western values therefore higher on the whiteness scale.
China = filthy communists who do not do what the whitest of whites want therefore lower on the whiteness scale.
Itās just racism tbh, but how different races/ethnicities view that dynamic gives rise to whiteness as a concept.
A final example, Irish people have always being viewed as ālesserā than English in the UK and called white ni**ers in America. That is literally whiteness. Irish were perceived lesser to the English and America majority and seen as cheap and exploitable labour.
Fast forward a few years and we see how America have hidden their bigotry towards Irish because theyāve now got some creepy reverence to heritage despite the systemic oppression of the people they now love showing that to at least the America people, Irish peoples āwhitenessā increased as they were required to be turned against other immigrant/working class groups by the white hegemony.
So to answer your question, minorities are racist to other minorities because of whiteness.
This perceived superiority to others thatās taught and encouraged by the whitest ruling group.
It benefits those higher on the whiteness scale to discriminste against those below because it shields them somewhat from the racism of the highest class of white people just like how I described the relationship between Polish people above.
White Anglo saxons are racist to polish people but the polish people find reprieve in being racist to black people because it curs the favour of the white ruling class and makes integration into society and acceptance easier.
Race has always being the biggest weapon of the ruling class to turn various groups of the proletariat against each other.
What youāve describedā¦ it that in action.
Good write up, but I think its slightly reductive to say that the sole motivator is a racial hierarchy.
Race as a concept of strict hierarchy hasnāt existed in its current form at all until just the last few hundred years or so, where Anglo-German supremacy managed to place itself at the top and rank the rest of the world beneath themselves (convenient for them since they now had a bullshit excuse to colonize the world for the cause of ācivilizingā everyone). There was a time when the very people who sit at the top of our current racial hierarchy were considered to be inferior savages. Aristotle and his contemporaries have written extensively on the ābarbarityā of the Germanic and northern European tribes, using the exact same language that would later be reused hundreds of years later by the descendants of those very peoples to discriminate and conquer the āinferiorsā. As someone with ethnic minority background, when discussions of race with friends or family come up, there is often less consideration taken when choosing the correct words and terminology simply from the idea that āweāve suffered too, so why canāt we call them what we want?ā.
Obviously this isnāt a good thing, but its also not uncommon. The notion that all non-white people are all part of the same oppressed monolith who canāt be racist towards each other due to a shared history of discrimination.
It of course varies from person to person and their views on this kind of discourse, and as you rightly pointed out a lot of it is indeed this kind of race ladder where you envy those above you and hate those below, but in other cases it could very well be just ignorance to the importance of respecting those of other races and seeing that simply agreeing that the oppressors are bad isnāt enough, you have to lift each other up as well.
Yeah thatās fair, thereās definitely more to it agreed than the one lens Iāve written about. I think I got so focused on that concept I ran with it š
Nonwhite people arenāt a monolith because they think they are, theyāre a monolith because the concept of whiteness and the way white people relate to them has made them one, regardless of their own relations to one another.
The difference between historic ethnic discrimination and modern racism is the arbitrary drawing up of racial lines around groups of people who form heterogenous clines of different genetic groups and cultures. Racism against āmiddle eastern west asiansā functionally includes Arabs, Indo-Iranians, Sikhs, Tuareg, Kurds, Palestinians, Algerians, Moroccans, Turks, and Kazakhs and a bunch of other cultures who donāt exactly identify with one another but are lumped together in this mixed bag of convenient colonial categorization based on their relation to colonial production. Like a Moroccan person and a Pakistani person would more than likely be offended if you counted them as āthe sameā. And for good reason, their histories, base forms, and superstructural forms are distinct and erasing that distinction is meant to open them to commodification and exploitation. For another example, in the western mind, latin america is āthat place where fruit and coffee comes from,ā which erases local cultures to conform them to the global role capital has assigned to them. Itās in-part the sort of thing the Zapatistas are fighting against in their cultural war against Mexican liberalism.
These modern lines began to form during the colonial period of western history. During the medieval period, discrimination was based on religion. Laws and cultural norms targeted muslims, lutherans, calvinists, catholics, etc. Slavery laws were formed on the basis of religion, where adoption of christianity could buy the freedom of a black or indigenous person (or their children) after theyāve fulfilled their contract. Then in the 17th and 18th centuries, something shifted in the Caribbean. Creoles were beginning to form communities where locally born whites, blacks, and indigenous people started to have more in common with one another than with the āmetropoleā of the European power exploiting their labor. They began to form coalitions to overthrow the colonial government, and often freed slaves (who could form up to 80% of a colony) to gain the proper mass line.
This spooked the Europeans immensely so their response was vicious. They rewrote slavery laws to no longer be religious, but instead be based on skin color, making the caste of slave immutable and heritable. The mixed-race creole bourgeoisie were destroyed and scattered, some even enslaved, and lost all their status to white immigrants.
Whiteness was invented at this point, a camraderie between europeans based on shared heritage in order to separate themselves from the slave class. It became illegal to enslave or indenture whites. It became illegal to intermarry with whites. It became illegal to show aggression toward whites. And this change in status consolidated the previously differentiated creole whites, lower class colonist whites, upper class colonists, and the gentry under one unified group. This white supremacist group still exists today, and has come to allow or deny various cultures into its ranks based on its political goals.
With the theory of white supremecist racism (as an important tool of capitalist imperialism), it becomes easy to see why the distinction of Ukrainians as white and Russian/Baltic slavs as nonwhite has a chilling effect on the entirety of white culture. It justifies the acceptance of Ukranian refugees into the ācilvilizedā imperial class and demotes slavs to the enslaved/colonized class (as all GZD users have pointed out with news articles). When we say āyou canāt be racist to white peopleā, what we mean is that you canāt reverse this relation just with words or behaviors, especially as an individual. Racial discrimination toward white people doesnāt carry the same class distinctions. Say, for example, a Palestinian landlord denies housing to an Israeli. This is discriminitory, but it doesnāt have the same class character as an Israeli landlord denying housing to a palestinian. The former is technically anti-colonial and the latter is distinctly colonial.
TL;DR: In order to be racist to white people you have to change global class relations and dismantle Eurocentric neocolonial imperialism.
Thank you for wording this better than I ever could š„°
Nah, you did fine. You used all the academic stuff. I just tried to make it sound more āmarxistā as thereās a huge overlap in concepts. If hegemony/white supremacy and capitalist imperialism were on a Venn Diagram, itād just be a circle. Theyāre different co-moving facets of the same thing.
Ngl I panicked the fuck out when I was accused of a ādisturbingly racist rantā so it was validating that you and commiewolf recognised the point I was making. Iām no expert after all so I wouldnāt be able to ace the point if ya get me.
This is exactly the same situation as when I left the anarchist sub on reddit many moons ago. BAME Comrade essentially explained what Iāve put above and the white majority of the sub freaked out and dogpiled them for ābeing a racist to whitesā for bringing up the concept of whiteness.
āIf hegemony/white supremacy and capitalist imperialism were on a Venn Diagram, itād just be a circle.ā
Lol this is too accurate.
āExcuse me, but Iāll have you know that white lives also matter.ā
Lmao my sides, they hurt š¤£
You elaborated on one aspect of it very clearly, nothing racist about that at all. It is important to recognize that these sort of things are done by different people for different material reasons. Discriminated people come in different forms, and their history of oppressions will shape how their outlook towards other discriminated groups is. Its not racist to recognize the inherent racial hierarchy and how it shapes these views. It is one of many factors that can lead to discrimination among minorities. I think you explained it well.
Thank you, Iāll make sure not to get too focused in on one facet in the future š
Any suggestions on how to tell them not to say the n word? Itās so egregious i donāt know where to begin. Like no way do they think itās actually an appropriate word to use.
I was once speaking to a ESL chinese lady and she used a racist term instead of jewish, but it was clear imo she didnt know that the term was racist.
I guess this would be a good place to start, explain the gravity of the slur they used and how its not just an insult but a slur that dehumanises people. Conversations are always best.
Let them say it to the wrong one. Like you said; there is no way thee dont know itās inappropriate.
crossposted to https://lemmy.ml/c/bestoflemmy
ohā¦ thats the first time someone articulated why people believe itās not racism when there is predjudiced slurs against white people. now it makes much more sense
No. In fact, this whole rant is disturbingly racist in itself.
You canāt be racist to a white Anglo saxon because regardless of what you say, they exist and have always existed at the top of a hierarchy of races/ethnicities.
This foundational assumption isnāt even true. History doesnāt start at European colonization or the British Empire, and even during colonization they were still in competition with other empires for most of it (Russian empire, Spanish empire). Historically the Roman empire was by far dominant over them. But maybe thatās nitpickingā¦
Itās not a fundamental perception and dehumanisation of someoneās ethnicity or race based on racial supremacy.
Why do you assume other races/ethnicities/etc.'s beliefs in superiority are invalid? (invalid meaning ānot counting as superiorityā, not meaning āunjustifiedā) Europeanās arenāt some untouchable group. What the hell would make them so? Because they successfully colonized some other continents? Thatās not unique at all.
Consider this horrible paragraph (I really hope I donāt have to point out that this is merely impersonation):
White people are racist, individualist, brutal invaders. They are parasitic viruses that ruin their own land and have to invade others to survive. Ironically they are generically inferior, when a white and black have a baby, the baby almost always turns out black due to our superior genes. Elimination is therefore inevitable, itās simple mathematics. Theyāre also only the global superpower due to luck, now that other races have access to their tools they are being out-competed by China, which they called āthird-worldā less than a century ago. IQ tests consistently show Jews and Asians are far superior to them in intellect. White people are really just ice-age cavement who fought each other until they they got good at the only thing theyāre able to do: killing.
Are you honestly going to tell us that isnāt racist at all? Are you going to tell us that someone who already didnāt like europeans canāt look at that and nod? Are you going to tell us that this isnāt rightfully offensive on a racial level to a random āwhiteā (whatever that term means this day of the week) person?
How is it ādisturbingly racistā? Because Iāve said you canāt be racist to white people?
We arenāt talking about ancient history or pre colonial times though. We talking about a racial hegemony that exists and was purportrared by white colonialism and the affects its created and had on society now.
Itās not about past hierarchies, itās about the dominant narrative of racism that white colonialism has instilled in people.
Nobodies arguing that you canāt be racially bigoted/discriminatory to white people but that wasnāt my point and youāve conflated that with racism.
Racism being the taught behaviour of arbitrary race discrimination and the subsequent behaviours, assumptions and slurs that comes along with it that play into this pointless hierarchy white colonialism infected everyone with.
If the person in original post is using racist slurs that was described above then yeah jts racism and its taught racism OR they might just not know the gravity of the word theyāve used sure. Then thatās a conversation OP can have but if they do understand and are using that word with the weight it carries then thatās playing into racism.
People can be discriminatory for a load of reasons and Iām not saying thatās good or fine but Iām highlighting that when other minorities repeat slurs and rhetoric used by white colonialists thatās playing straight into the hierarchy created by white colonialists and the false perceptions it purportrated.
Also whatās with the wildly bigoted strawman? Of course itās unacceptable. Itās racially discriminatory, wildly bigoted and false but itās not racism in the way I understand it because thatās not what racism is defined as. Youāve described racial discrimination sure but itās not coming from a literal place of percieved societal superiority. If a Jewish person or a Chinese person said this then it would be vile sure but they arenāt in control of the dominant perception on race that white people invented. Itās not like if they say that itās something that everyone agrees to like itās fact and runs with it. Where as once a white Anglo drops any sinophobia or antisemitism that is immediately internalised and reacted to by people because of the internalised racial hierarchy people are subjected to in society.
Just Google whiteness. Maybe then you can see what Iām trying to say.
Whiteness is a concept and while Iām happy to admit my take on the whole situation might be a bit narrow just talking about whiteness when other factors obviously play a role to as highlighted by Commiewolf, you coming in here crying āthis is disturbingly racistā because I tried to describe the concept of whiteness tells me youāve immediately decided Iām attacking whites and have went into reaction mode to that end instead of actually reading what I put. Iāve not pulled this out my ass if thatās what your thinking.
Nobodies arguing that you canāt be racially bigoted/discriminatory to white people
I donāt know how else to interpret āyou canāt be racist to white peopleā. Being racially discriminatory is a textbook definition of racism. Is there some different definition you are using in this context?
Youāve described racial discrimination sure but itās not coming from a literal place of percieved societal superiority.
There are clear indications of the wildly bigoted strawman that indicate a belief in genetic superiority, cultural superiority and moral superiority, and a perception of Chinaās socio-economic superiority. Why should perceived societal superiority be necessary for this to be racism? What makes the racism example in OP different? Can Japanese be racist to Chinese due to perceived whiteness but not the other way around??
Because Iāve said you canāt be racist to white people?
Not that alone, moreso the implication that anglo-saxons are untouchable or superior just because theyāre the ādefault raceā in places such as the USA, and the trivialization of the power other races/etc. have, implying they canāt look down at white people as an inferior society or race. They absolutely have the power to see themselves as superior. Millions do. In fact, I think this stems from the implicit USA-centric view of Whiteness theory which limits its applicability. Are anglo-saxons socially superior in China?
People can be discriminatory for a load of reasons and Iām not saying thatās good or fine but Iām highlighting that when other minorities repeat slurs and rhetoric used by white colonialists thatās playing straight into the hierarchy created by white colonialists and the false perceptions it purportrated.
I agree with this in the case of the specific slur used in OPās post; that is a slur with implicit hierarchical implications of āwhite over blackā (or even potentially a general āwhite over non-whiteā in many circles). Iām not sure if I agree with it in a generalized sense. A case study would be slurs that developed independently of any white group, that was never used by whites. Furthermore, you could find slurs that arenāt majority against minority, to argue against the hypothesis of a socially superior group being necessary.
I guess my argument can be summed up as Whiteness not being a necessary part of racism. They are of course highly interrelated, white and non-white being a racial concept, but I donāt think the racism in OP is them insulting a person in relation to their whiteness. That would be self-defeating, unless the aboriginal person implicitly considers themself white! Instead, I believe they are merely recycling an insult that independently happened to be about whiteness.
I agree with your comments about the ruling class benefiting from sowing racial divisions to discourage class solidarity.
Because racial discrimination and āracismā ARE different things.
White academia has absolutely clouded the narrative around what racism as a concept means and thatās why your misunderstanding my comment. E.g. when universities and white talking heads cry racism when no theyāve never suffered racism and canāt. They can suffer racial discrimination.
You see racism as racial discrimination. But racism is racial discrimination down a hierarchy. It needs that position of superiority to propagate and it includes the conditions that create or empower racial discrimination.
āTo put it simply, racism refers to a deep-rooted belief system that one group is superior to another. Though morally reprehensible, it is not illegal, unless it manifests as discrimination. Racial discrimination is the act of isolating persons based on their race and subjecting them to differential or unequal treatment because of their race. Racial discrimination is therefore a by-product of racism and is illegal under the laws of Canada.ā
They š are š not š the š same š thing
They are inextricably linked agreed but they are different concepts and whatās important is understanding that, how that relates to any racism or racial discrimination that takes place and what place that is coming from.
If the world was different then yeah I guess racism could exist against white people if it became deep seated and systemic but it hasnāt and thatās my point. The current system absolutely removes Anglo saxons from racism because we propagate it at least in Australia where OPs post I assume is taking place.
Yes minority groups in the UK can look down on whites but itās kinds impossible to discriminate against them without the white majority coming down on them like a hammer. I never said non whites couldnāt look down on whites but youāve conflated racism and racial chauvinism there.
Also if we were in China then whites wouldnāt be the majority would they? Thatās an entirely different situation to a white Anglo-Saxon country like the UK where Iām coming from with my argument and Australia where OPs post is situated.
I canāt honestly speak for what the person in OPs post said, if itās just a word theyāve picked up then maybe there isnāt racist intent behind it but it still propagates the racism in Australia. If the person did know what the word meant then thatās quite sad they chose to use it given the connotations. Itās not really my place to theory craft their intention.
What I can attest to is the racism and perceived levels of whiteness I see in the UK and how racist perceptions can come from people who themselves are also victims of racism. Going back to the original example, polish chefs in an old work were insanely racist to black people, but they themselves suffer racism from Anglo saxon brits.
The explanation Iāve gotten from friends is that within Anglo saxon countries if we are being specific (because frankly I donāt want to assume or talk about non Anglo-Saxon countries race dynamics) the racism and perceived whiteness of varying immigrants plays a huge part in how those groups can be racist against each other. Im sure thereās plenty of other contextual parts but perceived levels of whiteness are a thing.
So in the UK you canāt be racist to any white person. You can racially discriminate against them but the narrative and societal perceptions around race in the UK and other Anglo-Saxon countries is that white sit at the top of this hierarchy and therefore are untouchable by systemic and overt racism. That doesnāt mean they are free of being racially discriminated against but thats different. One is the action caused by the actual concept and attitudes that come with it.
Being racially discriminatory is a textbook definition of racism
This is massively unhelpful. Textbook definitions are not supposed to be be all end all explanations for how the world works. And when it comes to racism, what it means to a white person and what it means to a person of color is massively different, but you will not find that in Miriam Webster or whatever. The point of Marxist analysis is to recognize what are the conditions surrounding racism today and how we got here. Sure you could argue that if you ignore all context and focus solely on the literal meaning of the word āRacismā then it is technically possible to be racist towards white people. But that is not how racism has worked for the past 300-400 years, and claiming that recognizing the inherent privilege of white people in the modern day is racist in itself is self defeating. We cannot have any meaningful change without acknowledging that the modern racism has been perpetrated by white people. Thatās not to say that its impossible to be racist towards white people, it is possible, but there is no INSTITUTIONAL racism that disadvantages white people, and internalizes vast populations with negative stereotypes that end up causing discrimination. To claim so is to be ignorant to the material reality of the Anglo dominated world we live in.
Thatās not to say that its impossible to be racist towards white people, it is possible, but there is no INSTITUTIONAL racism that disadvantages white people, and internalizes vast populations with negative stereotypes that end up causing discrimination.
Thatās an excellent clarification, and I agree.
As many people mentioned in a crosspost to /c/anarchism, and by Inbrededcanadian in this post:
Being a minority doesnāt imply you have solidarity with other minorities. I think they should, but thatās my opinion.
It doesnāt have to be reflecting racism of others. It can be, yes, but it doesnāt have to be.
Imagine an indigenous person of a country, like the Aboriginal Australians mentioned by the post creator. Imagine an individual holds the nationalist racist view of āThis is our land. Other races shouldnāt be tolerated hereā. As a result, they hate Chinese, Anglo-Saxons, Lebanese, Vietnamese, Greeks, Italians, Native Americans, Brazilians, Somalians, Russians, Portuguese, Cubans and basically everyone who isnāt their in-group.
Hating other minorities is congruent with that personsā world view. They may openly insult an African-American in America getting attention for BLM which overshadows this personās own struggle in the Australian news, instead of having solidarity and embracing the local adaption of BLM that circulated over in Australia.
Makes sense, thanks!
Just to add a couple of (maybe rambling) thoughts (long thoughts, sorry ā you know me by now)ā¦
Note: I do not think the following is racist, but please tell me if / where it is, so I can reflect on the issue.
This is going to be quite abstract as I want to avoid slurs, even if slurs in quotation marks or asterisked-out would make the text clearer.
Iām going to put āraceā in quotation marks, here, to capture the difficulty of talking about this topic and the fact that its meaning is contested.
āRaceā as a political construct. It is not biological. In Stuart Hallās words, race is a āfloating signifierā. To paraphrase him, we āread each othersā bodiesā. If this is true, then there are no clear lines between āracesā, and the process of associating a person with this or that race is fluid, political, and changes over time. This means there is no real question of āaccuratelyā saying that person X or Y is this or that āraceā. That saidā¦
Racists tend not to be overly āaccurateā in categorising people politicised as racially different. Racists use slurs developed about one āraceā to talk about other āracesā. The racist is not trying to be polite, but only trying to āotherā whoever they are talking to / about (unlike, say, the liberal who preaches anti-racism, the kind of āI canāt be racist, I donāt even see raceā liberal).
So, to someone (e.g. an aboriginal person) who has been politicised as āracedā by white racists (who are not overly concerned with fine distinctions), I can see how their subjective experience is of being āracedā in general rather than specifically, and attached āinaccuratelyā to a āwrongā label.
If white racists constantly use an āinaccurateā racial slur to describe a person of a ādifferentā āraceā, that person may see themselves as part of the same group as others that also hear the same slur (more āaccuratelyā) directed at them ā even if liberal, āpoliteā racism would not associate that person with that slur. If someone has been called a particular derogatory word their whole life, they may feel comfortable saying it themselves.
This leads to a second point about hierarchiesā¦
āPoliteā liberals, all of them, are racist. They may not realise it, but race and racism are connected to capitalism. Without anti-capitalism, the āpoliteā liberal must be content with capitalism ā which is historically āracial capitalismā ā and racial inequality, hence must be racist.
As liberalism is the dominant force in this world, and as the āruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling classā (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology), the dominant modes of thinking and talking about āraceā and racism, are liberal.
From the liberal outlook, categorising someone as the āwrongā āraceā and then berating that person for using a slur that only āin-groupā persons are allowed to say is perfectly coherent. But this accepts a racial hierarchy, and so is doubly racist.
āPoliteā, āwell-meaningā liberalism implies that it is better to be āhigherā on the hierarchy than lower, and that it is āracistā for someone higher in the hierarchy to use a slur that only āaccuratelyā applies to people ālowerā on the hierarchy. This is partly why, to liberalism, it is bad for one minority to use a slur against another minority, but okay for people in the āsameā minority to use the slur with / against each other.
To be clear: I am not saying it is okay for anyone to use slurs. It is not. My point is that liberalism seems to accept that some people can use slurs, but this rests on a racial hierarchy, which is itself racist, and so we should reject the liberal approach to anti-racism.
To give an example of where the liberal view can lead, Iāll take us to Michael Rosenās Twitter page. I can only find one example as I cannot browse the site properly without an account: https://twitter.com/michaelrosenyes/status/1088851387767762945?lang=cs. Rosen is Jewish. During the āLabour antisemitismā crisis circa 2019, Rosen was repeatedly the victim of antisemitism (including by some Jews) for criticising the mainstream narrative on Labour antisemitism.
Rosen, at the time (again, I cannot find the tweets), was showing / arguing that the vocal anti-antisemites were falling back on racial hierarchies and themselves being antisemitic / racist. The point is that minorities can internalise liberal racism / racial hierarchies; and even when members of āin-groupā use slurs that they are āallowedā to say, the end result is racism.
I think you are right, by the way, that within the liberal framework, white people know that they can get into trouble by being openly racist. So white liberals, etc, are careful not to be racist in public.
We must reject liberal conceptions of race and racism, reject racial hierarchies, see race and capitalism as intertwined, and combat both.
This was really informative thank you.
Youāre welcome.
someone higher in the hierarchy to use a slur that only āaccuratelyā applies to people ālowerā on the hierarchy. This is partly why, to liberalism, it is bad for one minority to use a slur against another minority, but okay for people in the āsameā minority to use the slur with / against each other
Cool insight!
think you are right, by the way, that within the liberal framework, white people know that they can get into trouble by being openly racist. So white liberals, etc, are careful not to be racist in public.
I was wondering why nobody else commented on this, thanks for putting in your input on this paragraph
Since you said African American, Iām assuming you live in America
The answer is very simple. Americans are racist by nurture, and so minorities that grew up in or immigrated and assimilated to American culture are also going to be racist
Americans are racist. And even though many white people donāt like it, South Asian-, African-, Asian-, etc. Americans are first and foremost Americans. culturally, politically, and socially
